The impact of face masks on infants' learning of faces: An eye tracking study

Abstract

This preregistered study examined how face masks influenced face memory in a North American sample of 6- to 9-month-old infants (N = 58) born during the COVID-19 pandemic. Infants' memory was tested using a standard visual paired comparison (VPC) task. We crossed whether or not the faces were masked during familiarization and test, yielding four trial types (masked-familiarization/masked-test, unmasked-familiarization/masked-test, masked-familiarization/unmasked-test, and unmasked-familiarization/unmasked-test). Infants showed memory for the faces if the faces were unmasked at test, regardless of whether or not the face was masked during familiarization. However, infants did not show robust evidence of memory when test faces were masked, regardless of the familiarization condition. In addition, infants' bias for looking at the upper (eye) region was greater for masked than unmasked faces, although this difference was unrelated to memory performance. In summary, although the presence of face masks does appear to influence infants' processing of and memory for faces, they can form memories of masked faces and recognize those familiar faces even when unmasked.